Manage junk email with the Block Senders and Safe Senders lists

To automatically put spam in the Junk Email folder, use the Blocked Senders List. To prevent emails from being marked as junk, add them to the Safe Senders List.

Prevent trusted senders from being blocked

By adding email addresses and domain names that you trust to the Safe Senders List, you instruct Outlook that messages from those sources are never to be considered as junk. If you belong to mailing lists or distribution lists, you can add these names to your Safe Recipients List.

To add a person to the Safe Senders List, click a message from the sender, and then click HOME. In the Delete group, click Junk, and then click Never Block Sender.

To add an email address or domain to the Safe Recipients List, click a message from the sender, and then click HOME. In the Delete group, click Junk, and then click Never Block this Group or Mailing List.

If you don’t have a message from the person, you can still manually add email addresses or domains to these lists by doing the following:

Click HOME.

In the Delete group, click Junk, and then click Junk Email Options.

Do one of the following:

To add safe senders, on the Safe Senders tab, click Add.

To add safe recipients, on the Safe Recipients tab, click Add.

In the Enter an email address or Internet domain name to be added to the list box, enter the name or address that you want to add. For example, you can add:

a specific email address, such as someone@example.com

an Internet domain, such as @example.com, or example.com

Click OK and repeat for each entry that you want to add.

If you want all Contacts to be considered safe senders, select the Also trust email from my Contacts check box on the Safe Senders tab.

Some people whom you correspond to might not be listed in your Contacts. If you want all such people to be considered as safe senders, select the Automatically add people I email to the Safe Senders List check box.

If you have existing lists of safe names and addresses, you can move that information into Outlook. Click Import from File and browse for the list file that you want. To create a file that uses your current list, click Export to File, and then specify where you want the new file saved.

To change a name on either list, click the name that you want to change and then click Edit. To remove a name, click the name that you want and then click Remove.

If you are using a Microsoft Exchange Server account, all of the names and email addresses that are in your organization's address book — also known as the Global Address List — are automatically considered safe.

Block messages from someone

Messages from email addresses or domain names in the Blocked Senders List are always treated as junk. Outlook moves any detected incoming message from senders in the Blocked Senders List to the Junk Email folder, regardless of the content of the message.

Note: The Outlook Junk Email Filter doesn’t stop junk email from being delivered, but instead diverts suspected spam to the Junk Email folder. You can change the sensitivity of the Junk Email Filter by changing its level of protection, or use third-party solutions, which can be more aggressive.

To add someone to the Blocked Senders List, click a message from the sender, and then click HOME. In the Delete group, click Junk, and then click Block Sender.

If you don’t have a message from the person, you can still manually add email addresses to the Blocked Senders List:

Click HOME.

In the Delete group, click Junk, and then click Junk Email Options.

On the Blocked Senders tab, click Add.

In the Enter an email address or Internet domain name to be added to the list box, enter the name or address that you want to add. For example, you can add:

a specific email address, such as someone@example.com

an Internet domain, such as @example.com, or example.com.

Click OK and repeat for each entry that you want to add.

Notes:

If you have existing lists of safe names and addresses, you can move that information into Outlook. Click Import from File and browse for the list file that you want. To create a file that uses your current list, click Export to File and then specify where you want the new file saved.

To change a name on the list, click the name that you want to change and then click Edit. To remove a name, click the name that you want and then click Remove.

If you are using a Microsoft Exchange account, all of the names and email addresses that are in your organization's address book — also known as the Global Address List — are automatically considered safe and can’t be added to the blocked list.

It's from the email address: bounce@fabrikam.com. To automatically move it and future emails from this address to the Junk email folder, you add it to the blocked senders list. We click HOME, Junk, and then Block Sender. Outlook displays a message confirming you added the address to the blocked senders list. Click OK and we see the emails in the Junk E-mail folder.

To confirm the addresses in the blocked senders list, we click HOME, Junk, Junk E-mail Options, the Blocked Senders tab, and there it is.

If we want to block all emails from fabrikam.com, click Edit, select the @ symbol, and all of the text to the left and press Delete.

Click OK, and OK again.

The information bar near the top of each email describes how Outlook changes what it considers to be the Junk email.

This is a Microsoft Exchange Server email account. So emails in the Junk email folder are deleted thirty days after they are received, unless your email administrator changed it to a period other than thirty days.

If you are not sure if you have an Exchange Server account, click FILE, Account Settings, and Account Settings again.

On the E-mail tab, the Type column lists the type of account for each entry.

A Microsoft Exchange Server account is listed as Microsoft Exchange. It is important to note that an Exchange ActiveSync account is not an exchange server account.

From all exchange and non-exchange server accounts, links and other functionalities are disabled in emails that are in the Junk E-mail folder, unless you enabled them in Junk E-mail Options.

For information about Junk E-mail Options, see Movie 1: Control spam.

If you trust the sender of an email, move it to your Inbox, then click the links.

To help improve the effectiveness of the Junk email filter, you can report Junk email directly to Microsoft using the Microsoft Junk Email Reporting add-in for Outlook.

For more information and to download it, see the link in the course summary at the end of the course.

It's a good idea to check your Junk E-mail folder on a regular basis.

To see if legitimate emails were moved there, and to delete the rest.

This email was sent from my friend Meghan. It's not junk. To move it to the Inbox and prevent the future emails from her being marked as Junk, I'll add her address to the safe senders list. I click the email, click HOME, Junk and then Not Junk.

Outlook displays a message saying it is going to move the email back to the Inbox.

And, because Always trust e-mail from Meghanf@treyresearch.com is checked, future emails from her will not be marked as Junk.

I click OK and we see that the email has been moved to the Inbox.

To see her address in the safe senders list, we click Junk, Junk E-mail Options, the Safe Senders tab, and there it is.

If your email address is in Outlook contacts, which is pretty common, we recommend you uncheck Also trust email from my Contacts.

Spammers can send an email to you that looks like you sent it. Unchecking this option prevents these emails from being automatically considered safe by Outlook.

If you use a Microsoft Exchange Server account, all names and addresses in your organization's shared address book, referred to as the Global Address List or GAL, are automatically considered safe.

Now you have a good idea about how to control spam in Outlook.

Of course, there's always more to learn.

So, check out the course summary at the end, and best of all, Explore Outlook 2013 on your own.